Attributes of government registers

Registers and legal proceedings All government registers should have point-in-time search capability. That is, the register should be searchable to see what it looked like at any point in time in the past. Links from point-in-time records should jump to counterpart...

Privacy and government registers

There are two reasons for wanting privacy: The legitimate desire to be secluded from public view of others when conducting legal activities; The illegitimate desire to be unaccountable for illegal actions. Once this distinction is made, it can be seen that in most...

The importance of registers

Public registers defend and extend property rights by allowing contracting parties to be sure of whom they are dealing with. They make many crimes impossible and deter the remainder by making criminal investigation much easier. The importance of registers cannot be...

Achieving sound money

Constitutional prohibitions It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it...

Systemic risk

What can be done to prevent a disastrous collapse in credit in the first place? Forbid force-fed credit First and foremost the government should be prohibited from creating debt instruments, lending to banks, injecting liquidity into banks, setting interest rates,...